


Nice Work If You Can Get It

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 07:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14910734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: "Sometimes she wished they could pretend to be a normal couple."A follow-up to "The End Of The Aughts". This is... how you say... some self-indulgent nonsense. Also a (late) birthday present for Mad.





	Nice Work If You Can Get It

**Author's Note:**

> *paddles this canoe and whistles a jaunty tune, willfully ignoring signposts which say things like 'this is OOC' and 'what are you doing ith your life'*

_“Karl!” She exclaimed when he found her. “One last hurrah for you, I suppose?”_

_“You know this isn’t my idea of fun.”_

_“No, I’m sure you’ll be much happier once you’re up in space far away from human contact and you can work on your research in peace.” Rosemary rolled her eyes and laid a hand on his arm. “Won’t even miss me, will you?”_

_“I certainly won’t miss you forcing me to take your leftovers. I can cook, Rosemary.”_

_“But you don’t and if I left you to your own devices you’d live off crackers or starve yourself.” She argued._

_Karl sighed. “I’ll miss you, yes.”_

_“I knew you would.” Rosemary winked. “Why don’t you sing a quick duet with me and we’ll get out of here until Monday when you launch?”_

_“If we must.”_

_“We must.”_

 

The singing itself was horribly awkward. They’d settled on a bouncing, upbeat kind of song and it was only that and being together up on stage that kept it from spiraling into disaster. Partway through, Karl looked down at Rosemary and felt such a swell of fondness for her that he found himself pulling her closer, smiling at her as she smiled at him, and suddenly it wasn’t about the song, or Carter’s stupid party, or the mission launch on Monday- it was just about them. About being close.  

They finished the song slightly breathless, and Karl was sorely tempted to press a kiss to his companion’s forehead. But Rosemary cleared her throat, glancing around the room, and stepped away from him before he could do so. She set down the microphone and hurried off the stage, tugging Karl along as she went. Karl thought he saw Carter in the crowd watching them and felt a small pang of worry, but it was swept away as Rosemary dragged him out of the room and down the hall towards the door that would take them out of the building and onto Goddard’s campus.

“Rosemary?” Karl began, hesitating as she pulled him along yet more fiercely.

In response, she turned around and pressed a quick but searing kiss to his lips. “Are we getting out of here, or not?”

Back at Rosemary’s apartment, she locked the door, shrugged out of her suit jacket, backed him up against island in her kitchen, and kissed him again, more slowly this time, and he let her, savoring the feeling of having her so close after so much time. He had missed this terribly considering how short a time he’d had it.

But eventually they broke apart, Karl letting out a slightly shaky breath that made him chuckle at himself. Rosemary joined him, her laugh low and warm and achingly, painfully nostalgic.

“Rosemary… what are we doing?”

Rosemary made an impatient sound in the back of her throat. “Kissing.”

“Could have worked that out for myself. _Why_ are we kissing?”

“Are you complaining?” She started to tug off his jacket and a jolt of desire coursed through him.

“No,” he began, his voice rough as she dragged him down by his tie and began working on the buttons of his shirt, “but this is…” Rosemary pressed her lips to the now exposed skin of his neck and he swore.

Her bedroom looked very much the same as he remembered it ten years ago. It wasn’t until he had her lying on her back and looking up at him as he undressed her that he spoke again.

“Why now, _suka_?”

She closed her eyes and a small shudder ran through her, and he leaned down to press a trail of kisses along her collarbone. “You know why.”

“I want to hear you say it.” He whispered into her shoulder.

“I’ll miss you.” Rosemary said, and then sighed. “There. Are you happy?” her voice caught on the last word.

“No.” No, he wasn’t happy. He had two days left on Earth before the Ishtar launched and he began the human phase of testing for Decima, and this was happening _now_. She’d pushed him away and he’d accepted it, because little though he’d wanted to he’d believed her when she’d told him it was better for the both of them. There wasn’t enough time for everything he wanted from her, and they had had _so much time_ before.

But he would take what she was willing to give, and if that was a last-minute fuck to say goodbye, he fully intended to make the most of it.

 

She didn’t go to see him off at the launch. It would have been… messy. Rosemary snorted at the thought. As though any part of this wasn’t.

 

It took Carter exactly a month to approach her and start asking questions- just enough time that she’d started to hope that maybe he hadn’t noticed anything worth commenting on at the party. Of course, Carter noticed everything and forgot nothing, and was a very good judge of just the right moment to pounce. When he called her into his office in mid-September with the instructions to sit down and tell him how things were, Rosemary felt slightly disgusted at herself for allowing his silence to lull her into a false sense of security.

“Would you like something to drink?” He asked her, folding his hands on his desk and smiling serenely. Rosemary smiled back and if that smile was slightly less bright than her usual professional smile, well. That was just the way it would have to be.

“No, thank you sir.”

Carter tutted. “Not even an espresso? I just got that new machine in the anteroom. No?” He pouted slightly at her head shake. “You seem out of sorts, Rosemary.”

“I’m fine.” Rosemary said, rolling her shoulders and sitting up straighter. “Just tired.”

“Hmm, you’ve seemed tired for a while. Since the karaoke party, I think.” Something clenched in Rosemary’s chest and she tried very hard not to let anything of it show on her face, but Carter still pressed his lips together as though she’d confirmed something for him. “Rosemary.” His tone was gently chastising. “I thought we settled this topic years ago.”

Rosemary stared at a point over Carter’s shoulder so hard that her vision began to swim out of focus, but her voice was steady and cool. “So did I.”

“So what happened?” Carter spread his hands wide on his desk.

“I had… a moment of weakness.”

Carter considered her for a moment. “You know, I’m not sure that’s true? You and Doctor Kelley managed to maintain a professional relationship for nearly ten years without any interference from me, I have a hard time believing this particular instance was just you slipping up.”

Rosemary sighed. “What are you implying, sir?” she asked in a tone of boredom. Acquiescing to Carter’s demands when it came to the extent (or lack thereof) of her personal life had never worked, and it was laughable that it had taken Doctor Kelley going to space to make her switch tactics, but, better late than never, Rosemary thought.

Carter narrowed his eyes. “Only that your actions a month ago seemed a bit like… hmm, how should I put this… throwing caution to the winds.”

Rosemary stared him down. “If that’s the way you saw it, there’s little I can do to change your mind, sir.”

Carter let out a small sigh. “Your tenacity never ceases to amaze me, Miss Epps.”

“I think you usually call it stubbornness.”

“In any case, you may go. If these are the decisions you’re going to make, so be it.”

Rosemary stood up and left the room, blood pounding in her ears. God only knew what kind of punishment Carter was planning to rain down on her, be it today, tomorrow, six months from now. There was nothing for it but to get back to work. She’d learned long ago to live with the threat of imminent destruction.

None came.

But that December, at the Goddard Christmas party, of all things, Carter pulled Rosemary aside to tell her that the rest of Kelley’s crew was dead and that it would be some time before the major they’d sent up to retrieve him reached the star he was orbiting.

“I’m sure he’ll miss you terribly in the next several months.” Carter murmured, somehow managing to sound both sympathetic and positively gleeful.

By the time Kelley made it home, Rosemary had talked herself into and out of and back into a plan to apologize for her breach of their relationship the previous August, but when she opened the door of her apartment that day in October and saw him standing there as though he wasn’t sure he really was there at all, the words evaporated on her tongue. She pulled him into the room and held him, tenderness for his obvious suffering and regret for any part she may have played in it (she wasn’t entirely sure Carter hadn’t left him up there longer than necessary in some backwards but effective attempt to punish her) overtaking the desire to protect herself.

Rosemary thought it would be several weeks before he was in any state to work again, but amazingly, he seemed almost normal by November. In a professional setting, anyway. Carter had his research extracted from the Black Archive and his lab set up in no time, and at first Rosemary was heartened by the fact that he seemed to be processing whatever he’d gone through by working.

But privately, Kelley just seemed lost. He responded to her gentler-than-usual teasing with blank looks, followed the orders passed down from Carter without comment, and took the casseroles she forced on him without complaining. He hadn’t been back to her apartment since the day he’d gotten home, and while Rosemary could have just as easily gone to his, she wasn’t sure what she’d do if she showed up and he continued to not-react to her. 

It was with a kind of controlled panic that she confided in Carter.

 

Karl Kelley did not believe in eavesdropping. If you listened to a conversation that didn’t concern you and learned something you didn’t want to hear, that was your own failure.

Of course, Karl Kelley considered that bit of wisdom to be for other people, people who’s lives didn’t depend on being able to deal with hard truths. Which is why, when he went to Rosemary’s office to pick up the necessary paperwork to request a new shipment of synthetic polymer be delivered to his lab and saw Carter go in and close the door, he didn’t hesitate to move close enough to make out the low hum of their voices.

“-thought I had made it quite clear how I felt about this on several occasions, Miss Epps.”

“I know, sir, and you were right, but I’m worried about-“

“That’s exactly my point. Doctor Kelley isn’t yours to worry about.”

Karl’s brows shot up in concern, both that he and Rosemary’s relationship was the current topic of conversation with the director of Goddard, and at the implication that it had been before.

“Sir.” Came Rosemary’s voice, in a tone Karl recognized as her ‘I don’t lose my temper and I will make you suffer if you force me to’ voice. “I know him better than anyone else, and I can promise you, he isn’t as alright as whoever you had look at him led you to believe.”

“He’s gotten back to work on the virus, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, but-“

“Then he’s alright.”

There was the sound of someone slapping the wood of the desk. “He absolutely isn’t, and if you truly value the work he does here you’ll grant me some leniency so I can figure out why and _fix it_.”

The next words were spoken so softly that Karl wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “You can’t protect him, Rosemary.”

Karl didn’t really process what was said after that. He felt slightly sick listening to this conversation, in no small part because he could feel the straws Rosemary was grasping at and was trying to come to terms, all at once, with the idea that for all her manipulation, for all her coldness, she had apparently spent the last ten years of their acquaintance trying very hard to keep him close but not too close, lest Carter get suspicious.

“Well.” Carter said, jerking Karl’s attention back to his presence after far too long. “I suppose for the time being I’ll trust your judgement in this area. You do know him best, after all, for all I’ve tried to discourage that.”

“Thank you, sir.” Rosemary said, with a relieved sigh.  

Carter laughed. “ _Don’t_.”

Karl scrambled around the corner of the hallway just in time for Mr Carter to stride out of Rosemary’s office and set off in the opposite direction.

He breathed a sigh of relief that Carter hadn’t seen him and peered around the doorframe. An all too familiar ache filled his chest at the sight of Rosemary, her head in her hands and her elbows on her desk, looking for all the world like she wanted to scream or cry or both. He wanted to move in to hold her, but something Carter had said stopped him. He’d always known Carter was a manipulative bastard, but the fact that he’d worked Rosemary into a position where he could suggest that she’d somehow failed to keep Kelley safe and have her react this way made him want to set off after him and wring his neck. Kelley could take care of himself, and perhaps, he thought, watching Rosemary take a hitching breath, he should have realized sooner that there was more going on than what he was seeing from Rosemary herself.

Rosemary chose that moment to look up and see him standing in the doorway. “Doctor Kelley.” She nodded at him and straightened herself out hastily. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Are you alright?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

She gave him one of her falsely bright smiles. “Of course I am. Is there something you needed?”

He gestured to her filing cabinets. “I need copy of requisition form for lab supplies.”

Rosemary turned around to pull out the necessary paperwork. “Why Carter won’t let me stock the labs with these I’ll never understand.”

“Having to go through big scary management woman discourages waste and frivolity.” Karl said with a small smile.

Rosemary snorted. “Two out of four, that’s an all time low for you.” She handed over the paperwork.

“You can be frightening when you want to be, Rosemary.” Karl said as he took it, and she gave him a real smile, although a tired one. “I will see you tonight.”

“Oh?” She looked pleasantly surprised.

“Yes.” He tried to think of something else to say, failed, and headed out of the room.

Karl Kelley did not believe in eavesdropping, but he spent the rest of the day and into the evening dwelling on what he’d heard Rosemary and Carter discussing. If he brought it up directly she’d deny it. But the idea of not confronting in any way the fact that Carter had apparently been overseeing their relationship in some capacity for years, that Rosemary had been carrying for both of them a burden Carter had laid on her when Karl could have taken some of the weight, made something burn hard and bright inside him.

 

Rosemary hummed sleepily as Kelley passed her a mug of coffee. It had been a week since Carter had given her permission to keep a closer eye on him and a week since they’d picked up where they’d left off in 1990- with him sleeping in her bed and her worrying about how she was going to remain detached enough to keep them both safe. The difference was that this time, she had resigned herself to the fact that no matter what she did, Carter was going to find a way to punish them both for it later, and so she might as well enjoy what she had for as long as she had it.

“Let me do something for you.” Kelley said, breaking the silence of Rosemary’s apartment that was beginning to characterize their pre-dawn hours together.

Rosemary almost choked on her coffee. It took her several seconds to compose herself again and glare across the tiny island at him with an eyebrow raised.

“What kind of something?”

Kelley looked at her intently. “What would you like?”

What would she like… that was the problem, wasn’t it? Rosemary had thought she’d known, once, before Carter had stepped in and she’d stopped letting Karl Kelley into her apartment and her bed. She’d thought it had been a simple attraction, that they could sleep together and he’d be on his way and she’d get back to work. But he’d stayed in her bed, and he’d come back again, and she hadn’t realized until it was too late that the sex was only part of the reason why. Nearly a decade hadn’t dulled the ache. His presence in her kitchen, drinking coffee in companionable silence as the sun rose and she mentally ran through her to do list for the upcoming day, was proof of that. He liked her, and she liked him, and she’d gone against her better judgement and Carter’s interference to hold onto that, and she didn’t feel especially equipped to answer his question, now or ever.

So she evaded.

“We’re already sleeping together, I don’t know why you would feel you need to butter me up.”

Kelley appeared unruffled. He continued to watch her, his expression unchanged. Damn him.

“There’s nothing I want from you that you don’t already give me.” Rosemary winced as the words left her mouth, because while they were true to a point, that hadn’t really been the tone she was going for. She cleared her throat, made her voice harsher. “That is, we’re having sex. I don’t want anything else from you.”

Kelley continued to watch her with that patient expression. 

“Are you done?” She snapped.

He straightened up from where he’d been leaning against the counter. “Rosemary,” He said with a small sigh, “please.”

“Don’t try to be nice. I know you, Doctor. You are not a nice man.”

“And you are not a nice woman, but here we are.”

She took another drink of her coffee and looked around the room, at the first beams of sunlight reflecting off a pot on the drying rack. “I thought I made it clear that we’re just sleeping together.”

“This ceased to be ‘just’ anything a long time ago, _suka_.” His voice was unbearably soft, and she hated it, and she hated him, and she hated the prickling sensation that was starting to form behind her eyes. Sometimes she wished they could pretend to be a normal couple, with a normal couple’s problems. But it was a fool’s fantasy- they’d chosen their paths a long time ago, before they’d even known each other, and it was just bad luck they’d only gotten sucked into each other’s orbit after it was too late for them to change trajectories.

But she was feeling foolish, or she was still tired and unprepared to put her mask back on for the day, or maybe she did want him to know, because she said, “I’d like to start over.”

He hummed in acknowledgement. “From which point?”

“I don’t know. The beginning, maybe.” She swept her arm through the air, gesturing vaguely around the room and at him. “This isn’t what I thought my life would be like when I started working for Goddard. I wonder if I should have chosen something more… ordinary.” Of course, that decision reached back further than Goddard. Rosemary had never been ordinary. Always the risk taker, always the pushy one. Always getting herself into situations she’d come to realize she’d have to fight her way out of or die trying. So far it hadn’t come to that.

He nodded. “I see.” He finally looked away from her, moving to rinse his coffee cup out and set it in the drying rack on the counter. “Have a pleasant morning, da?” His tone had turned brisk and businesslike.

Rosemary blinked at his abrupt change in manner, then sagged in relief. If small truths portioned out over long periods of time were what it took to keep him from pushing she supposed that was something she could deal with. Of course, there was always the possibility that she’d hurt him, except Rosemary had learned early on that hurting Karl Kelley and discouraging Karl Kelley were two entirely different animals. “You too. I’ll see you later, I’ll be by the lab to pick up that requisition paperwork in the afternoon.”

“No need. I can take it to Carter myself.” He gave her a brief, searching look from the doorway to her apartment, then left, closing the door behind him on his way to his own rooms down the hall. Rosemary stared at the closed door for a long time, trying to convince herself that sending Kelley off had been a triumph, and not something that left her feeling cold and alone. 

 

“Are you planning to tell me what you’re doing in my apartment?” Rosemary asked after she’d recovered enough from the shock of opening her definitely locked door to find Dr Kelley already in her kitchen, chopping vegetables. He shrugged, glancing over his shoulder at her for a moment before turning back to what he was doing.

“Cooking for you.”

Rosemary blinked. She cleared her throat. “How did you get in here?” She crossed her arms. “As if I don’t put up with enough of this breaking in, special ops nonsense from Al.”

Kelley gestured to a set of keys further down the island, not moving from what he was doing. “Did not break in. I made copy of your key in 1995, when you were in hospital with pneumonia, remember?”

Rosemary snatched up his keys from the counter and frowned at them. “No, I didn’t remember that.”

Kelley looked up from what he was doing at last, a small frown on his face. “Do you have any aversion to mushrooms?” She just stared at him, and his frown deepened as he finished what he was doing. “I will take that as ‘no’.” Rosemary watched him carry her cutting board the short distance to her stove and sweep its contents into her frying pan.

“ _Karl_ ,” she said sharply when he made no move to turn away from his cooking, “what are you doing?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, busy measuring out spices, and wine that certainly hadn’t come from Rosemary’s cupboards. He set a lid on top of the frying pan and turned to face her, a guarded expression on his face.

“You said what you wanted was to be ordinary.” His voice was very stiff. 

“And you took that to mean, what, domestic?”

He moved forward and leaned his hip against the counter, mirroring her posture and crossing her arms. “Ideally I would have liked to take you out, but… I know you are usually tired by the end of work day, and besides, did not think it wise to risk somebody from Goddard seeing us leaving campus together.”

Rosemary’s heart stuttered and her blood chilled. Kelley was watching her closely, a small, accusing expression on his face, and her conversation with Carter earlier rushed back to her in a very different light.

She turned away and set her wig on the counter far away from where Kelley had been cooking. It was her avoiding his gaze now.

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough.” His tone was even, and when she looked at him she was a little shocked to find that instead of angry he looked… sad. Once he would have been angry. A different man from a different time. “Why didn’t you just tell me that Carter thought our association was a bad idea? All those years ago? We could have trusted each other.”

“You didn’t need to know.” She shook her head, forcing away thoughts of self-pity and regret. “There wasn’t any reason to tell you because he was right.”

“If you really believed that I wouldn’t be here right now.” His voice was very soft as he took a step towards her, then another.

“Oh?” Rosemary made to put her hands on her hips but Kelley took them in his own and she found she had no desire to pull away.

“You wouldn’t have opened this wound again. Have known you for years, Rosemary, I know you do not simply _indulge_ in things.” He chuckled and lifted one of her hands to his lips, brushing a delicate kiss across her skin. She held her breath, her heart beating fast as though to make up for stopping earlier.

“Dmitri…” His name came out a whisper.

"Please," He whispered back as he pulled her close, “let me love you.”

Rosemary knew they would regret it, that Carter would make them regret it, but she’d grown so tired of being the responsible one, the sensible one. So she kissed Karl, warm and tender, ten years’ worth of care for this damaged, damaging man on her lips. They’d face the consequences together. She thought, through the haze of pleasure that was filling her mind as he ran a hand up her back and pulled her close, that together they might even be able to survive them. 


End file.
